A Closer Look at Different Types of Learning Perspectives

The three types of learning perspectives I’d like to focus in on are, the cognitive perspective, the biological perspective, and the humanistic perspective. Each of these perspectives paints a slightly different picture of the learning process. According to the lecture notes, “Regardless of the theoretical perspective one takes to understand learning, it leads to reason that it has some biological basis.” (GCU, 2008)

The cognitive perspective deals with how people gain information and how they then store it. While reading about the cognitive perspective, I was especially interested by the memory method called “chunking”. Chunking is a way that people use to remember long sequences by relating them to words or phrases that they are already familiar with.

I watched a video on YouTube that gave a really great example of chunking. The student was asked to remember this 20 letter sequence: I-HAT-E-SL-EEP-LE-S-SNI-GHTS. Remembering this entire sequence one letter at a time might be a daunting task, but by using chunking, a person could spell out a familiar phrase. (nelsonroquejr, 2008)

In a classroom, this perspective might be observed in a classroom setting as simply as students preparing for a test. The cognitive perspective could also be viewed as students take notes from the teacher’s lecture. As a student, I remembered things best when I wrote them down. I didn’t take traditional notes however. I often did what is called a “mind map”. It’s a drawing of sorts… a central idea surrounded by its supporting ideas. I supposed this is why chunking is so interesting to me.

The biological perspective tells us that most of a person’s behavior is inherited, but can change based on certain environmental factors. For instance, if someone is an angry person, therapy may be used to help the person make changes in their behavior. Another example of a change in someone’s behavior due to an environmental factor would be drug use. (McLeod, 2007)